more wretched by hanging about. There's the
mystery," he broke out suddenly. "You can't--none of us can. What might
be nothing to you or me may be death to that little thing, but it is he
that has to go through with it; life is a horrible sort of pleasure,
Jock."

"Is it a pleasure?" the boy said under his breath. Life in him at that
moment was one big heavy throbbing through all his being, full of
mysterious powers unknown, of which Death was the least--yet, coming as
he did a great shadow upon the feeblest, a terrible and awe-striking
power beyond the strength of man to understand.

After this night, so full of emotion, there came certain days which
passed without sign or mark in the dim great house looking out upon all
the lively sights and sounds of the great park. The sun rose and
reddened the windows, the noon blazed, the gray twilight touched
everything into colour. In the chamber which was the centre of all
interest no one knew or cared how the hours went, and whether it was
morning or noon or night. Instead of these common ways of reckoning,
they counted by the hours when the doctor came, when the child must have
his medicine, when it was time to refresh the little cot with cool clean
linen, or sponge the little hot hands. The other attendants took their
turns and rested, but Lucy was capable of no rest. She dozed sometimes
with her eyes half opened, hearing every movement and little cry.
Perhaps as the time went on and the watch continued her faculties were a
little blunted by this, so that she was scarcely full awake at any time,
since she never slept. She moved mechanically about, and was conscious
of nothing but a dazed and confused misery, without anticipation or
recollection. Something there was in her mind besides, which perhaps
made it worse; she could not tell. Could anything make it worse? The
heart, like any other vessel, can hold but what it is capable of, and no
more.

It is not easy to estimate what is the greatest sorrow of human life.
It is that which has us in its grip, whatever it may be. Bereavement is
terrible until there comes to you a pang more bitter from living than
from dying: and one grief is supreme until another tops it, and the sea
comes on and on in mountain waves. But perhaps of all the endurances of
nature there is none which the general consent would agree upon as the
greatest, like that of a mother watching death approach, with noiseless,
awful step, to the bed of her only